The Victorian Era

Author's response

Book:

Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain Since 1880

Lesley A. Hall
Macmillan 2000; ISBN 0-333-65053-0

Reviewer:

Dr. Paula Bartley

University of Wolverhampton

I
was delighted to read Paula Bartley's flattering review of Sex,
Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, which is the
kind of review historians dream about. It would be lazy, though
true, to say that my choices as to what went in and what didn't
were affected by the length limitations of the format for the textbook
series - my editor did very kindly grant me a 20,000 word extension,
but there was still much that I couldn't cover. So I shall address
a few of the points she raises.

Firstly,
I should like to dissociate myself from any claims that 'the Victorian
female was a hot little number'! I was using this as a blanket characterisation
of a certain trend among some historians of the Victorian era (far
be it from me to imply that they are necessarily all males with
crinoline and corset fetishes...) to argue against the stock repressive
Victorian image by over-exaggerating in the opposite direction.
(I defy any female to be a hot little number with the repressed
unsensual anxious creature who was only too many Victorian males).
Goodness knows it seems impossible to get rid of the 'repressed
Victorians' stereotype - every few years someone produces a 'radical'
new piece of popular history to argue that, hey, they were quite
the converse, serious swingers and kinksters having huge numbers
of orgasms. My position is that 'Victorian sexuality' like 'woman',
is too often the subject of huge and meaningless generalisations.

While I
hope that my account was informed by recent theoretical developments,
I am rather cautious about the ways in which theory can be used
by the historian. If none of us comes to the evidence that survives
completely free of preconceptions and assumptions, I have come across
too many instances where theory has been deployed as a box into
which to cram the evidence, rather than as a analytical tool to
assist in understanding it. Also, I have come across instances of
developed theoretical arguments which rest on a shaky, at best,
knowledge of contingent facts (e.g. the grounds upon which divorce
could be granted, 1857-1923 or the precise legal position of birth
control).

I concur
that the chronological organisation sometimes works against coherent
narratives of the history of different topics. However, in many
cases, these topics didn't have a coherent narrative - it was a
case of stop-start, flurry of moral panic followed by a slump into
neglect, ebb and flow of concern, which occurred over and over again
across a wide range of sex and gender issues. Using E. M. Forster's
characterisation of the development of narrative form in Aspects
of the Novel, many of these stories follow the simplest 'And
then... and then... and then' pattern and never rise to the complexity
of development and causation which defines 'plot' as opposed to
mere 'story'. This appears to have been particularly acute in the
case of sex education, one of my current research projects. Cyril
Bibby, Special Advisor on Sex Education to the Central Council of
Health Education, was expressing ebullient optimism in 1946 at the
apparent surge of interest in and enthusiasm for sex education on
the part of both teachers and parents, an optimism that in retrospect
seemed to him ill-founded and deceptive. It was not that there was
furious opposition: the subject was simply ignored and neglected,
or given the most minimalist of attention within the school curriculum.

In the instance
of abortion, which Paula Bartley mentions, I perhaps did not make
clear enough the extent to which the Bourne judgement of 1938 foreclosed
the more radical agenda being promoted by the Abortion Law Reform
Association. It satisfied most of the requirements of the sympathisers
among the medical profession by inscribing in case-law the medic's
right to employ his or her clinical judgement 'in good faith' to
perform an abortion. In spite of the ongoing efforts of ALRA and
its supporters throughout the 1950s (which should not be underestimated
as a factor in keeping the movement alive), it was the thalidomide
scandal, combined with the dissatisfaction of articulate middle-class
married women with the reliability of the contraceptive methods
available to them, which reignited the struggle in the 1960s.

I would
certainly agree with Paula Bartley's comment about the extent to
which feminism and eugenics were intertwined in the early years
of the twentieth century. A further analysis of this interesting
topic may reveal that there was a radical moment prior to 1914 in
which a very real feminist note was being struck in the debates,
which got lost with the assimilation of 'social purity' into 'social
hygiene', as with the debates on male responsibility for the dissemination
of venereal diseases which dissipated with the introduction of a
new public health agenda on VD control (for a further discussion
of this see the Introduction to, and my chapter in, Roger Davidson
and Lesley Hall (eds.) Sex, Sin and Suffering: Venereal Diseases
in European Social Context since 1870, forthcoming, Feb 2001).

I felt it
was important to include the broadest possible spectrum of sexual
behaviour and attitudes towards sexuality, both the normal and the
'deviant', as these are intricately related within a much larger
system of understandings of and beliefs about sex and gender. As
McLaren demonstrated in The Trials of Masculinity, perceptions
of deviancy are used to define, and police the borders of, the 'normal'
and acceptable, while as Kinsey discovered, the boundaries themselves
start to break down when individuals are questioned about their
own intimate practices.

It would
have been nice to include more on geographical and regional variations
and such localised phenomena as the Bolton Whitman fellowship and
the circles around the Leeds Arts Club. My Lancashire grandmother's
expression 'living tally' (i.e. setting up a household without formal
marriage) suggests that this was a recognised and acknowledged phenomenon
in some districts. But as Paula Bartley points out, a good deal
of work still needs to be done on sexuality in the provinces.

Again, much
more could have been written about the role of religion, not only
the traditional groupings of Judaism and the various branches of
Christianity but also the rise of various religious 'alternatives'
such as theosophy, diverse occultist groups, and by the 1950s Wicca,
which Ronald Hutton in The Triumph of the Moon has made a
compelling case for as being a peculiarly British religion. It is
notable that many of the marriage reformers of the interwar period
were clergymen (or lay persons active in religious organisations)
promoting a theology of marriage informed by the changing status
of women and incorporating the insights of sexology. A strong note
of nondenominational sex-and-nature mysticism is discernible in
the popular writings of Marie Stopes (there is less distance between
her and D. H. Lawrence than might at first appear!), and this clearly
formed a powerful part of her appeal.

But I would
see two main lacunae in Sex, Gender and Social Change. I
would admit that the relatively sparse attention I gave to issues
of race (and indeed constructions of 'the Other' more generally,
for example the delineation of 'French vices' and 'Hunnish practices')
is a weakness. However, there are several important studies either
recently published or in progress which do tackle this. I also consider
that the question of changes and/or continuities in specifically
male behaviour, attitudes, and identities was not addressed with
as much fullness as I should have liked. This is definitely an area
which requires further investigation!

To conclude,
I'm only too aware of how provisional Sex, Gender and Social
Change is as an account of its topic. Since I completed the
manuscript I have been gnashing my teeth over the appearance of
so many relevant and important studies: substantial accounts of
censorship, Louise Jackson's book on child sexual abuse in Victorian
England, Paula Bartley's own important study of prostitution, Roger
Davidson's survey of Scottish attitudes towards sexually-transmitted
diseases, Chris Nottingham's The
Pursuit of Serenity: Havelock Ellis and the New Politics,
and several more, not to mention all the work that I know is now
in progress. It's rewarding but also frustrating to be working in
such a lively and thriving field!